She glanced again at the building and couldn’t avoid feeling small again. “I can’t wait to see how you run this.”
“Today will be full of discussions. But I can’t function until I’ve had my coca tea.” The centuries-long embargo on coffee that the Portuguese had imposed on Abyssinia in retaliation for its fierce resistance to conquest was over, but in the meantime the habit of coca tea had irreversibly taken hold of the world. “Let’s get inside. Office hours must be starting about now.”
They walked past the main entrance and entered the part Gilberto had designed. The walls were nondescript, but above their heads the stones of the dome had inscriptions in hundreds of languages.
“What are we seeing here?”
“This is the welcoming area for visitors. Those engravings on the dome come from all over the world. Almost every nation contributed a slab of marble.”
“What’s carved on them?”
Gilberto stood under the center of the hall and extended his arms with a wide smile. “The highest principles of humanity. They’re all here.” He pointed at one near the southern wall. “That’s the Latin word for charity.” He turned her around so they looked at the opposite side of the hall. “That one’s from the Yamato. It means ‘reason for living’. And next to it you can see the Arabic word for peace.” He guided her gaze to a slab two rows above. “I can’t read Hopi, but I’m told their name means reverent harmony.” He recognized another one to his left. “Ah, that’s Chinese. I was here when they placed it; they said it means unconditional love. And that one’s from our friends the Semai; it’s their word for graciousness.” They turned again. “I forget where I saw the Mijikenda word for collaboration. They’re just so many. It always inspires me to walk through this passageway and know that all of humankind has sent us their good wishes, and that every culture already had a way to describe them. I’m sure somewhere here I saw a prayer in Hebrew that means to restore the world.” His eyes welled up as they went over the sacred stones. “I recognize the Sanskrit word for harmlessness, and the Greek word for excellence, and that one over there is a very complicated word in Isizulu that can be summarized as interconnectedness. When I asked for its translation, they gave me a whole speech and I was amazed that one little word could mean so much.” Hana pointed at a stone directly above her, and he searched in his mind until he recalled its meaning, “That’s ‘good sense’ in Catalan. Let me see… a diplomat told me this one here means ‘the good life’ in Kichwa, and over there you can see the Finnish word for perseverance.” He noticed one atop the door that led to the meeting hall, and his smile overflowed with joy. “I remember that one! It was sent by the Polish. I think they said it means ‘they will protect,’ but I’ll have to ask them again to be sure.”
When the wave of emotions receded, Gilberto opened the door to the inner part of the building and showed her the way upstairs. They entered the main meeting hall and marveled at its tall windows overlooking the snowy expanse. Outside, the fountain was just starting to shoot a modest stream that quickly gained height and was joined by a dozen others. For a moment they saw the façade of the building reflected on the pool, until the falling arc of the water jet unmade the image into numberless little ripples.
Author’s Note
This book was possible because my husband, Tucker Lieberman, gave me the material freedom to quit my job and pursue writing seriously. He also looked over every draft, made countless corrections to my English, and paid for the army of sensitivity readers who reviewed the final draft. We used the services of Salt & Sage Books.
I wrote this book during my undergraduate studies in creative writing in Bogotá, Colombia, and various teachers made contributions to my process. Ivonne Alonso did wonders showing me how to weave theme into plot. Liliana Moreno Acevedo figured what this story was about before I knew it myself. Eduardo Otálora taught me about the logic of characters’ choices. On the life and thought of Descartes, Rafael Rubio gave me more guidance than he’ll ever suspect.
My thanks extend outside the classroom. Kate Macdonald pointed out areas where the tone and the cast diversity could be improved. Rodrigo Bastidas critiqued an early version of Part 1 and helped solve consistency issues. Félix González provided specific and crucial worldbuilding advice for Part 3. Oren Ashkenazi made me see more clearly the thematic needs of the book and kept me from making a horrendous mistake in Part 7. Michael David Lukas examined the complete manuscript and showed me how to turn it into something presentable. Clay Harmon’s brief remarks of encouragement were an unexpected and welcome morale boost. Charlie Jane Anders and John Scalzi graciously allowed me to mention this novel on Twitter threads they initiated, which was more than I could have dreamed for. Paul Weimer helped spread the word and is surely to thank for several of my preorders. My father-in-law, Marc Lieberman, was an early reader of the finished draft and made supportive comments that I needed to hear during that stage of the process.
This novel was composed in the program YWriter, created by Simon Haynes. I wouldn’t have been able to keep the whole plot organized and logically interconnected without this program. Sometimes, our understanding of art overlooks the tools used in its construction, but one of the main factors that contributed to this novel surviving the travel out of my head and into the world was my good fortune in finding a tool designed by someone who understands what the craft needs.
All named characters in the prologue are historical. The plank bridge incident did occur, and chroniclers of the time tell us that about a hundred people fell into the Thames; somehow no one was hurt. Ours is the weirder timeline. Readers who wish to learn in more detail about the historical significance of William Adams should avoid the immensely popular but far too inventive Shōgun by James Clavell and read instead The Needle-Watcher by Richard Blaker. For a nonfictional treatment, Samurai William by Giles Milton is the best resource one could ask for. Since in my version of the timeline William dies before setting foot in Japan, no plot points were based on that book, but it did much to clarify my picture of the historical moment.
All named characters in Part 1 are historical except for Odahingum and the poor Father Martin. The changes I introduced to the flow of events caused the raid of Iceland to occur in 1620 instead of 1627. So, in my timeline, different people were captured, and thus different people wrote memoirs. In our timeline, Bridget Fuller and John Bradford did not marry each other. My main sources on the early history of the British colonies were The Peopling of British North America by Bernard Bailyn, A History of the American People by Paul Johnson, and The Destiny of Modern Societies by Milan Zafirovski. Although the Ottoman Empire features very little in this novel, The Turks in World History by Carter V. Findley was not without utility. About the lives of European slaves in Ottoman lands, White Slavery in the Barbary States by Charles Sumner is the canonical reference; I also consulted La Trata de Esclavos Cristianos by José Antonio Martínez Torres and White Gold by Giles Milton. A comprehensive description of the minutiae of maritime travel in the early modern age is Pasajeros de Indias by José Luis Martínez. For the scenes set around the Great Lakes, I relied on two sources by Francis Parkman: The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century and Pioneers of France in the New World. Unfortunately, complete and undistorted bibliography on the Ojibwe people is less abundant. Among many scattered sources, I resorted to the Encyclopedia of North American Indians edited by Frederick E. Hoxie. My crash course on the Venetian musical world was Cry to Heaven by Anne Rice, which I acknowledge to be risky, because a work of fiction is not a textbook, and I can only hope I exercised as much meticulous care with the topic as it requires. As luck would have it, my husband is a self-taught expert on the medical and cultural history of castration; his book Painting Dragons helped me design the character of Samuel Fuller, who in real life reached North America with the rest of the Puritans. The Mayflower’s travel log and the writings of its more illustrious passengers are readily available on the public domain, but nothing beats interviewing real people. The Plimoth Patuxet in Massachusetts is an open-air museum with performers in period costume reenacting with impressive fidelity the lives of the Puritans once they were settled in North America. My husband took me there in the summer of 2017 so I could get a better idea of the mindset of a generation that now feels alien.